Slice banking on Birmingham food truck trend

As Birmingham’s food truck culture grows, more brick-and-mortar restaurants are rolling out their own mobile eateries.

The owners of Slice Pizza & Brew this week said they’ve bought their first food truck trailer for about $55,000 and are planning to add another, while Cantina at Pepper Place is also adding a second truck.

Slice and Cantina, among others, are joining the growing ranks of restaurants across the country adopting an “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality toward the burgeoning food truck industry.

Slice principal David Donaldson, who’s also the attorney representing the nonprofit Greater Birmingham Street Food Coalition, said he doesn’t see food trucks and restaurants as competitors so much as complements to each other.

Other cities’ restaurants have found food trucks drive more food traffic to downtown, which helps both types of eateries, he said.

“They love food trucks,” he said of traditional restaurants. “They just don’t know it yet.”

The owners of Slice are betting the food truck movement in Birmingham will continue to grow, despite new regulations the city will likely pass in the first quarter of 2013.

The owners – brothers Chris, Jeff and Jason Bajalieh, along with Donaldson – bought a 7,000-square-foot warehouse at 3000 Fourth Ave. S. near Pepper Place in November for $280,000, according to public records.

They plan to turn the warehouse into a shared-kitchen hub targeted at food trucks, among others.

They said they plan to finish renovations, which will add five to nine small kitchens, by late 2013. The kitchens would satisfy regulations that small vendors and caterers prepare food in a commercial kitchen.

“We’re trying to help them lay the groundwork,” Jason Bajalieh said. “So, that person out there who may not know how to start up – this will cut out a step. It’ll help them out.”

The building will also help out Slice, whose catering services will be run out of the warehouse after the renovations.

Black Design Architecture is designing the plans for the former warehouse.